Twenty-one years ago, Madison was put away for beating her daughter to death with a table lamp, folding her body into a suit­case and dumping her remains in the Pass­aic River.

Terry Lee Wells

Wells knew he was getting out of jail but believed he was being sent to live far from the North Jersey communities where the Hat Bandit is believed to have pulled off a string of 18 bank robberies.

''That infuriates me! Oh, dear God in heaven!" she said during a telephone interview from her home in Florida. She described Madison as "crazy" and "dangerous."

''I can't believe that horrible, horrible time is coming back to haunt us again," she said.

That time was the mid-1980s. Madison began dating Terry Lee Wells, a nurse and accomplished horsewoman who graduated from Chatham High School in 1979, four years after he did. The two eventually rented an apartment at Regency Village on Route 22 in North Plainfield.

William Perlman/The Star Ledger Authorities bring James Madison, the suspected Hat Bandit, out of the FBI headquarters in Newark.

Madison at that time had an ounce-a-week cocaine addiction and a mountain of legal troubles in connection with passing bad checks and submitting bogus invoices to his employer, according to newspaper clips.

One night in January 1986, shortly after Wells had returned home from the gym, she and Madison argued bitterly. Their neighbors heard them screaming at each other, police said at the time. Prosecutors said they found evidence that Wells had been threatening to end their relationship, which might have angered Madison, authorities said.

Wells was not heard from for two months. Then, in March 1986, a suitcase with a body stuffed inside floated to the surface of the Passaic River in East Hanover. Authorities used dental records to identify the body.